"Princess Katarina!"

The sudden voice of one of the castle stewards made the mermaid princess jump. She had spent the latter half of the afternoon alone in her bedroom, deep in thought about the events of that morning, and had not been prepared to hear a voice address her suddenly from the other side of the curtain.

"Er, yes?" she said, clutching a hand to her chest.

"Your father says dinner is ready," said the stewart.

"Right. Thank you," said Katarina with a sigh. "I'll be there soon."

"Don't dawdle, Your Highness."

Katarina scoffed as she heard the stewart swim away. "Don't dawdle," she said in a hushed voice, mimicking him. Then she swam over to her vanity, sat down, and began to try to make herself look presentable for dinner.

As she ran a brush through her long brown hair, she resumed her train of thought. Before she had been interrupted, she had been thinking about the young human she had seen that morning. The one in the fishing boat. The one whose attention she had caught and who had stared absentmindedly at her. It was the first time a human had ever seen her. And what a strange encounter it had been. There had been no real interaction between them except staring, mostly from him. But of course she had done her own share of staring. It had not been for very long, but it was enough for her to take him in. He was not, perhaps, very handsome. But there was something about him that intrigued her. It could just have been that he was a human, which in of itself fascinated her. Or perhaps it ran far deeper than that. Maybe it was the way he had looked at her. And his reaction. He had clearly seen that she was a mermaid, yet he had not responded to seeing her the way she had always been told humans would. He had not gone savage and tried to impale her with a spear. He'd simply stared in pure amazement.

But then there were those two other humans in his boat. The big, burly one and the much smaller, skinnier one (she supposed they were his father and brother) who had caught all those salmon in the net. As far as she could tell, they more closely fit the description of humans she had always heard. What then was it about the one who had seen her?

She suddenly realized that she had been mindlessly brushing the same spot on her hair for over a minute. She hurriedly threw on a pearl necklace and matching earrings, tied her hair back in a ribbon, and pushed her way through her bedroom curtain.

Down in the dining room, she found her parents, King Nereid and Queen Pandora, seated at the long table waiting for her. King Nereid was a large, muscular merman with a close cropped haircut and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a gold leaf crown on his head and his powerful tail was vivd green. Queen Pandora was a fair, slender mermaid with an azure blue tail and wore her long hair in an elaborate bun bedecked with a gold headpiece. Both, like their daughter, had brown hair but whereas Katarina had inherited her mother's piercing blue eye, her father's eyes were a rich brown.

"You're two minutes late, Katarina," her father said.

"My good old father," Katarina thought irritably to herself. She loved her father very dearly, but sometimes she wished he was not so strict.

"Sorry, Father," she said, bowing slightly.

"Don't you remember me telling you we were having a guest this evening?" asked the king, gesturing to his right.

There sat Pike, the king's most trusted advisor. Katarina had forgotten he was joining them, which made the surprise of seeing him all the more unpleasant. Pike had served King Nereid for as long as Katarina could remember and she had never been particularly fond of him. He was tall, pale, and wiry with sleek, dark hair and goatee. He had gray eyes and his tail was a rich plum color. His appearance matched his personality: bland and dull. He was polite and highly intelligent, but he was such a stickler for the rules. This was what made him so unappealing to Katarina, who was a textbook free spirit. Two people like them could never see eye to eye.

"Princess," said Pike, smiling and bowing his head in greeting.

Katrina also bowed her head but did not smile, which her parents both noticed.

"Let's eat, shall we?" suggested Queen Pandora, catching the look on her husband's face.

Katarina took her place at the table and for a few minutes everyone ate in silence.

"So, my dear," the king said after several minutes. "How are your studies coming along?"

"Fine. Just fine," said Katarina. "I'm working very diligently."

"Good. Good," her father nodded. "History going well then? And mathematics? Literature? Art?"

"Yes, Father," Katarina said, trying not to sound bored.

"And music?"

Katarina nearly dropped her fork. She did not like the way her father lingered on the word music. It made her wonder if he suspected something.

"Music's going well," she said in a tone of forced calm. "And today's lesson was especially great," she added as an afterthought.

"Hm. What did you play?" the king asked.

"What?" asked Katarina, which was not easy as her throat suddenly felt very dry.

"Which instrument?" her father specified. "Was it, by chance, something in the wind family? I imagine so as the wind is clearly all your instructor heard today," he added, his voice becoming increasingly hostile.

It took Katarina a moment to figure out what he meant. Then, realizing she was now cornered, she hung her head, dropped her fork to the table, and said, "What do you know?"

"Enough," was her father's answer. "Your instructor told us you missed your lesson this morning."

Katarina would've liked to slap a hand to her forehead. Of course that old blabbermouth told them. How on earth had that not occurred to her before?

"What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?" her mother asked.

"I'm sorry. I forgot," said Katarina, out of habit.

Both her parents groaned at this pathetic excuse for an excuse.

"It's the truth," Katarina insisted. "Anyway, it's just music. It's not like it's anything really important..."

"Every field of study is important! Especially to a young lady of your rank," said King Nereid angrily.

Katarina was bursting to say that music lessons as she knew them were of no importance to anyone, princess or not. She would have loved to defiantly tell her father how he would like spending an hour a day studying boring music by boring artists under the direction of the oldest, dullest instructor in all the seven seas. But before she had the chance to do so, the conversation was interrupted.

"I wouldn't be too hard on the girl, Your Majesties," Pike said suddenly.

Everyone looked at him.

"As it happens, I encountered two salmon today during my afternoon swim who claimed to have been part of a school that was nearly caught in a net this morning," Pike explained. "You know how fish talk, of course. You can barely get more than a few words out of them. But based on what little information they provided, I was able to conclude that they had been rescued by a certain mermaid princess who had cut their net and set them free."

"Is this true, my dear?" King Nereid asked, sounding less stern.

Katarina could barely believe her ears. In all the years she had known Pike, she'd never imagined he would ever get her off the hook with her parents.

After adjusting to the shock, she answered, "Yes. I know the humans usually come to fish in the morning and I thought I should be there in case any of our subjects needed saving."

Her parents stared.

Then King Nereid cleared his throat and answered, "Well that was certainly admirable."

"Indeed," agreed Queen Pandora. "Well done, Katarina."

"Thank you," said Katarina. Feeling an enormous pressure being lifted from her shoulders, she eagerly carried on with her meal.

"Of course," Pike continued, "the words 'human boy' and 'staring' were also mentioned."

At that moment, all of Katarina's relief was instantly replaced by anger, fear, and the same sense of betrayal she had always come to expect from Pike.

"Katarina?" said Queen Pandora, demanding confirmation for this claim.

"You allowed yourself to be seen by humans?" King Nereid asked, much more furious.

"I, er... Well..." Katarina stammered.

"Answer me, young lady," demanded her father, never one to beat about the bush.

"Alright, yes," admitted Katarina. "But it was just the one..."

"What difference does it make how many?" asked her father. "A human is a human and that's all there is to it. Suppose he'd been armed with a spear or a net."

"He wasn't armed with anything, Father," said Katarina, trying to sound patient. "Alright yes, the other two had a net. But this boy was... different," she added, her voice dying off somewhat on the last word.

"Different?" her father asked, unconvinced.

"Yes," said Katarina. Her voice had suddenly developed an airy, almost dreamy quality. "He didn't seem to want anything to do with catching fish. He seemed curious. About me. His eyes were on me the entire time and he looked at me like I was a ghost. But he never raised a hand to attack me."

"No human is good, Katarina!" the king snapped. "I'd have thought saving an entire school of salmon from one of their nets would be enough to tell you that."

"But Father, he didn't..."

"NO OBJECTIONS!"

The king's roaring vice made everyone else wince, even Pike. For several of the most uncomfortable seconds of Katarina's life, everything was silent.

Then her father sighed and massaged his temples. He gave her a warm, fatherly look and then spoke to her in a very level voice.

"Katarina my dear, please try to understand," he implored. "We care about you. We want to see you live a long, happy, healthy life. And we want you to be prepared for your future. One day you'll be Queen. And as such we expect you to recognize the dangers of the world so that you may be able to protect your subjects."

"Yes, Sir," said Katarina in a voice filled with venom.

"Katarina!" Queen Pandora hissed.

King Nereid looked as though he was going to resort to shouting again.

"Think nothing of it, Your Majesty," said Pike. "She's still young. Going through a phase, as we all did at her age. I'm sure in time she'll outgrow it and learn to appreciate all that you do for her."

Katarina gave Pike an icy glare. She then pushed away her plate, rose from her seat, and stormed out of the dining room.

"Katarina," she heard her mother say.

"Katarina!" her father barked. "Come back here!"

But of course she did not. She swam off back to her room, cursing her father and Pike under her breath as she went. They were both so stubborn. So inflexible. So unwilling to accept the idea that not all humans were bad. What did they know? What experience had they ever had with real humans? They didn't know the first thing about humans, that boy, or even her.